What do you believe in?

The concept of deities has always appeared at the center of confrontation. “Why don’t you believe?” the believers question, and “Why do you believe?” the non-believers answer, usually ending in a verbal battle of science vs. faith.

Of course, the world is filled with a rich history of wars in the name of a god, but today the wars in the United States aren’t of bloodshed, but of picket signs, long blog posts and snarky exchanges of words.

I’ve considered myself agnostic for many years now, which in the terms of faith means I ride the fence. I’ve been the middle man, watching the power of belief in something battle against the power of belief in nothing.

It has always made me laugh, knowing that there would never be an Ali-style knockout until the world’s end, but nobody seems to realize that.

However, my emotional involvement with these wars has turned a new leaf as I’ve recently pulled from agnosticism and back to my faith.

After years of anger with God in the name of a family member and best friend being taken too soon, I have reapproached God with doe-eyes and the hope that my heart would be healed just by believing again.

Personally, I’ve never felt so fulfilled by religion that I denounced factual science or theories. I’m a woman of academia, and I love knowing a definitive truth. When I was younger, I went to church simply because my grandmother brought me along.

I didn’t understand exactly what God and faith entailed then, and I’m not claiming to  understand it now, but I don’t think that I’m ever supposed to completely “get it.”

In the last couple of months of my rediscovery of what I should believe, if anything, I’ve been reduced to overwhelming tears and long conversations with friends who abide by the Word on many different levels. Some went through the same war as me. Some know a great chunk of the Bible cover to cover and attend church every Sunday.

The brunt of what I’ve heard from these friends and family members who are bound so happily by what they choose to believe has left me to think that no matter what a person believes, it is a beautiful choice, and I will always respect the core of a
person’s decision to just have faith, or lack thereof.

This being said, I realize that most of the world doesn’t work this way. We constantly hear humorous or hateful pokes at the religious and faithful. Atheists and agnostics are designated as heartless and hellbound because of their choice not to believe in a higher power.

This all seems to defeat the purpose of believing if we are at one another’s throats and pushing our personal sentiments onto someone else.

Even from within the realms of my own faith, I don’t think I could ever force the feeling that only I can feel inside of my soul into the mind of someone else, whether they are religious or not.

The phrase “You can’t make someone love you” seems to pop into my mind here.

When I read Genesis 1:1 every morning, an incredible feeling rushes through me, fulfilling me with something that I’d been missing for a great chunk of my teenage years. Every part of me tells me that my God has been waiting for me to restore my faith in Him and that every space in my heart that I’d concluded as empty actually lay dormant and ready to be filled with his grace.

But that is very personal and molded to the way that I think and feel about life.

So, when another person (believer or non-believer) reads the words “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” I would never expect them to come to the same conclusion about these words as I have simply because I know that they can’t.

This is why I think we need to let go of these constructions and harsh criticisms of how we interpret life as individuals. Healthy discord is always needed to keep systems of belief strong. I will always grapple between science and faith because that is how I can find true satisfaction with the conclusions I come to.

But we need to stop dismantling one another.

Wars concerning a set of such astronomical and long-lived beliefs are empty battles, and verbal bloodshedding is no better than a knife-wound when the goal is to destroy what is on the inside of a person’s soul.

­— aysymatz@indiana.edu